


Counteract

by Twilight_Shadow_Songs



Category: Scooby Doo - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, bleak but hopeful, meddling kids with issues, playing with all of the franchises and the canons, re-imagining the scooby gang, we're going with shaggy's original family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:53:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29952999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twilight_Shadow_Songs/pseuds/Twilight_Shadow_Songs
Summary: A small summary on a group of meddling, broken kids.Norville's dad's a cop, and this helps nothing.Daphne's parents are billionaires, and this serves her only grief.Fred is a foster child. It taught him he's replaceable.Velma is a prodigy. She's realized this means trust is a luxury, not a formality.Together they solve mysteries.
Relationships: The Scooby Gang as found family
Comments: 9
Kudos: 10





	Counteract

Norville’s dad’s a cop. This helps nothing. 

In Coolsville, being cool means a lot of things, but none of them really apply to Norville Rogers. He’s too tall, even at a young age, too thin, too nervous because his dad’s a cop and that’s Norville’s problem. The world has too many sharp edges and he’s cut himself on every single one of them, and that’s that on that, as a cousin has said. 

He’s got too much family and not enough, because they’re all over except when it’s time to take care of him or his sister. So he grows up lean, angry, but most of all afraid afraid afraid. 

Most kids are assured their parents are going to take care of them, or someone is going to at least ask “hey, are you alright?” but he doesn’t have that. In none of his adventures has he bothered letting his parents know, or Sugie. His parents barely realize he doesn’t just walk around when he’s out of state-let alone out of the fucking country. And Sugie’s got her own life.

His first present was a garbage disposal unit. His clothes were thrifted because nobody remembered to buy them for him. His dog is a rejected police dog applicant. People call him Shaggy and he takes it. He mellows himself out in running, in sports in being nice because nobody else is going to be. 

Shaggy’s scared of everything, and when he’s scared, he runs. Fight, his insecurities whisper in voices that sound like his dad. Fight, son. You know how. 

Nah, he says to the phantoms he creates himself. Nah. I like, do just fine running, man. I’m fine. 

Daphne’s parents are billionaires. This serves her only grief. 

She’s lived a lot of places all over the world, and she’s lived in Coolsville, and there’s only one thing she knows; people don’t trust people with money, and sooner or later people figure it out. Her sisters got brains, beauty and empathy, and she got whatever was left. She hears the jokes, she knows. Dumb girl, sexy girl, no brains girl. 

Daphne disappears into old houses and old manuscripts and old fighting styles, and she learns and adapts. Her sisters see the quiet struggle and laugh but throw her bones. A sister is in Milan on a runway. Daphne sits beside her and learns about all the styles and fabrics, what goes where with what when. A sister is in an old museum piecing together an old manuscript. Daphne wanders for hours and hours, and reads what the sister offers. A sister does charities, with whatever she is asked to use, and Daphne learns beside her, works beside her.

Daphne slips into the streets as easily as she slips among the uppercrust, and she finds a boy who runs with a dog that talks and a sister that is far too young to be alone. She takes his hand and marches on. Sugie gets her own life, and Shaggy runs. Daphne explores and learns. 

Why can’t you be like your sisters, her inner demons cry. Proficient, beautiful, able to excel in their field. Choose her shadows cajole and plead. Choose just one thing. 

Better a jack of all trades who masters in none she grits at them as she crawls back up yet another hidden passage she’s fallen down. Better a jack of all trades than an expert in only one. 

Fred is a foster child. It taught him he’s replaceable. 

Fred’s been in and out of the fostercare system dozens of times. When he sits in the office again, another name is marked in black ink and he’s stared at by people who don’t care. Coolsville is just another stop in a long line of stops. Fred tries too hard and too often to be what people need. Happy, optimistic, helpful. But everything he tries gets ruined. He can’t stay anywhere. And then, he does. It’s not a great family, they barely stand him, but it works. 

He has every right, he’s told, to be angry or bitter. But even though he knows maybe he should, he can’t. He wasn’t a good fit. That’s okay. Next time. There’s a lot of next times, in his mind. Do better, learn smarter, try harder. Next time someone would think that was enough. 

A tiny piece of him wants to stop. Wants to sit down and cry and wail. But it’d just look worse than if he tries. He’s brave, and foolish and stupid and clever and kind and an idiot, and they’re all true and he knows that. It’s easier to not sit. If he does he might not get up again. He finds a girl with red hair and she drags a boy in oversized clothes along behind her. He thinks her hair looks like bloodclots, but he doesn’t say it because it’s bad and he can’t tell her he likes it. That color is horrible and wonderful. The boy looks like an afterthought in his entirety and Fred loves that, even if saying it would make Shaggy flinch. 

Fred isn’t a really real person and he knows it. He’s a prop. A behind the scenes worker. Graceless and too much for people, better relegated the cheerleader or the fixer or the handyman. And he doesn’t mind, really. Everyone has their place, and he takes comfort in his role where he is. He’s the brainstormer, the plan maker. He tries. He likes figuring how to be better and he tries. 

Don’t you want to be mean? He sometimes finds himself thinking. Don’t you want to stop being nice? It’s so hard being nice when nobody’s nice back. He frowns at himself and shakes his head. No, it’s easier to be a good person. At this point, what sort of good does being mean do?

He sees a mystery, he sees a haunted house, and he rolls up his sleeves. There’s something to solve, something to try at. He’ll do good. He’ll do good. He has to. He doesn’t know how to be anything else.

Velma is a prodigy. She’s realized this means trust is a luxury, not a formality. 

Her parents watched in bafflement when she was reading chapter books by second grade, had become an international chess player by nine, got three degrees just for the hell of it by sixteen, and watched anything with magic and mystery with an air of utter confusion and disgruntlement. She’s an oddity and she knows it, and Coolsville doesn’t like oddities much. She rattles off facts and observations like other people rattle off their favorite candies, and nobody likes it. She was told once she’s cute till she opens her mouth. Then she sounds like a murderer. And she’s not! She isn’t. But she likes facts, and mysteries, and considers magic another form of science and she knows every word in the dictionary but she doesn’t know how to make people get that. 

Her parents try, and her sister does but she knows her sister is bitter. Velma’s mind shines and it eclipses everything, even when she doesn’t want it to. She notices details and puts them together faster. And it’s so fast and simple and there she could scream, but she can’t.

And then there’s this group who goes around to abandoned places, and Velma likes them. A girl with red hair, the one kid who everyone knows barely sees his parents but nobody says anything, the foster care kid. They run around with that big silly dog and she likes the way they fit, and thinks that she could fit in there, too.

When she goes to a house said to be haunted, she finds the foster care boy directing them to make a trap, and the cop son pacing and running small laps because he’s bait, and the redhead calmly telling them how many secret passages and hidden booby traps she found (three hidden doors in the walls, two trap doors, one vent that goes to the attic, and on and on), and she pipes up that the house belongs to a family who could stand to lose a fortune if they sell. They stare at her, and then the foster care kid grins. 

It turns out it’s their neighbor, who wanted the land. Velma knew within twenty minutes of looking around, but she knows if she said it’d ruin the fun.

Velma’s smart. She knows it. She knows she could so easily get away with what the people they catch attempt. You’re better than everyone around you she sometimes catches herself musing. You can go farther without them. Yes she thinks crossly. I probably can. But why would I want to leave them behind? Even the tin man needed a heart and the scarecrow a brain and the cowardly lion courage. They make me better. 

She supposes they’re all a bit like counteracting poisons. Alone they’d be terrible for everyone around them, but together they neutralize each other. They’re broken things that fit best together. 

And that’s that on that, as one of shaggy’s many cousins would say. 

“Come on gang, looks like we’ve got another mystery on our hands.”


End file.
